A Civil Service

As personal secretary to two successive Deputy Governors and, in the past ten years as Clerk to the House of Assembly, Dennis Reyes — who retired in September after a distinguished Civil Service career — has been party to some of the most memorable moments in Gibraltar's recent history.

In his early years at the head of the Assembly's small staff Reyes was, perforce, a reluctant eaves dropper on the plans and strate gies of joe Bossano's Opposition party which at that stage had no offices of its own and often held its caucus meetingsin the larger of the Assembly's two offices.

"I heard a lot, but said nothing," Reyes told me recently.

It was a reticence that he had learned earlier when as secre tary to Foreign Office appointees Dick Neilson and John Broadley as successive deputy governors — Reyes became subject to the Of ficial Secrets Act for he was party to many of the triangular discus sions leading to the opening of the frontier...

"But, as on other occasions, I was a little pawn... very much in the know,but I couldn't talk about what I knew," he says ofthis period in a Civil Service career that has spanned more than three decades.

And though Reyes has a reputa tion for outspokenness that has not alwaysendeared him to colleagues in the Rock's bureaucracy or to some of our politicians whom he has helped over procedural hurdles in the House of Assembly, some of that ingrained reserve remains. For,above all Reyes — who retired earlier this month — is the epitome of tact.

Greying-haired and soft-spoken, he was an unlikely candidate for the wrath of any Chief Minister so his widely publicised contretemps with Peter Caruana in the House of Assembly last year surprised every one — including Reyes himself.

"It was a momentof stupidity on my part... and a moment I would prefer to forget," he admits."But it had been a bad day in the House... the Speaker had had a bad day... in fact it was a bad day for every one." Tactfully we turn back to the opening of the frontier and Sir Joshua Hassan — for whom Reyes confesses affection and consider able respect.

"I'm a great admirer," he says. "Sir Joshua was not only a very astute politician, he was also very much a man of the people, in the best possible sense. He had a mar velous capacity of remembering people's personal details — the sort of man who would walk down Main Street and stop to talk to a street cleaner, asking him how his wife was.'I've heard she wasn't too well recently,' he would say. Or he would stop and chat to a grand mother and congratulate her on the birth of her latest grandchild."

Sir Joshua, as the then Chief Minister, played a significant part in the discussion surrounding the opening of the frontier and Reyes reckons that throughout the highly secret negotiations both Sir Joshua and the Spanish brought with them a sense of urgency.

"After 18 years that the border had been closed Gibraltar seemed to be stagnant and Sir Joshua was determined to bring about a revival — for one must remember that opening the frontier benefited

Reyes cut his Civil Service teeth in the Tax Office, where he started his career in May 1965, and later moved from there to become Civil Service Training Officer — a post he filled with distinction for five years. In this role he was not only responsible for all the induction courses for newcomers to the Civil Service, but held and organized training sessions across the board within the service to mid-manage ment level. He mourns the disap pearance of this post — which he views as important to inculcating the sort of dedication weexpect,but don't always get,from Government employees.The post"disappeared" during the Bossano regime for the former trade unionist was "no lover of the Civil Service", Reyes admits wryly.

As well as his spell in the Deputy Governor's office and a return to the Tax Office, Reyesfinally moved to the Financial & Development Secretary's staff "where I thoughtI would probably end my career."

Instead,when a vacancy as Clerk ofthe House occurred ten yearsago, Reyes applied for thejob.It also cast him in the role of returning officer for several elections — the first in the by-election of 1999 — and he was also referendum Administra tor in the watershed referendum of 2002 as well as handling the European Parliamentary elections — again a first for the Rock.

These "firsts" for a Gibraltarian give Reyes a particular sense of pride, he admits. For he sees them as among the highlights of his career.

"In the 1967 referendum Britain dearly regarded us as incapable of running something like that ourselves and sent someone out from the UK to administer it/' he says. And again he chuckles as he recalls, with justifiable pride, the fact that in all the elections which he has supervised only one ballot paper has ever been lost.

"That was in the 2002 refer endum and when I found out, I immediately reported it to Gerald Kauffman the senior British Labour MP who had been sent out as a senior observer of the process. He was astonished that 1 mentioned it at all, and told me that in British elections literally hundreds of bal lot papers went missing each time. 'Don't bother to report it,' Kauff man advised me... but 1 did." And those who recognize Reyes' deep integrity will not be surprised that he did so.

"1 can't say for sure what hap pened to that missing ballot,though probably someone decided to keep it as a souvenir of what, after all, was to be a historic occasion — or itmighthavejustbeen thoughtless ness on the part of an elderly voter who forgot to put it in the ballot box, crumpled it up and put it in his or her pocket instead. Unfortu nately, we'll never know."

And his skills as a returning of ficer and Referendum Administra tor are such that although he has officially retired, Reyes has been asked to take on the cloak of author ity for a final time to administer the referendum on the new constitution when it is held later this year.

As Clerk of the House Reyes has seen "major transformations' dur ing his decade in office. As well as the "much needed" major refur bishment ofthe Assembly premises

— "It must be the only parliamen tary building in the world that has two commercial cafes or restaurants on its ground floor," he points out — there have been major changes in the production of Hansard (the parliamentary record) and of vari ous booklets which the House staff produce in situ.

"Things have moved quickly in a very short time," he says, and though the House of Assembly is "not unique in this respect", the changes have been significant. Computerisation has both eased and speeded up the work of the House's small staff, and during Reyes'term has made it possible to provide a full index of all questions — making these and the ministerial answers swiftly accessible for the first time.

"Before we produced the index one could spend hours oreven days trying to track down a question and the answers to it," he adds.And,as well as the technical changes, he also believes that the standard of debate and the level ofspeeches has improved.He is too tactful,though, to say whom the better speakers are or have been.

"What will I do in retirement? I don't really know." A smile lights up his face. "All my life I've been too busy to develop any hobbies or outside interests. and I shall cer tainly spend time on all the books that 1 have bought but haven't man aged to read. But I don't intend to be a couch potato — I'm sure that I will find something interesting to do."

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War to End All Wars".

As in previous years, the occa sion will be marked with a short ceremony at the Lobby of the House of Assembly. Here memo rials are found commemorating the names of those Gibraltarians who gave up their lives in the wars. The two-minute silence will be marked by the firing of a gun by the Royal Gibraltar Regiment at 11.00 hrs. Buglers will then sound The Last Post and wreaths will be laid.

His Worship the Mayor, the Hon.Qive G Beltran, will be lead ing the ceremony. Guards ofHon our will be provided by the Royal Gibraltar Regiment, the Royal British Legion Gibraltar Branch and by local War Veterans.